therapeutic science | David M Masters

Difference Between Therapy and Friendship

There is a difference between therapy and friendship. Whether you are a coach, consultant, counselor, or member of the clergy, there is (or should be) a clear line between the therapeutic relationship and that of being a friend.

If you’ve been professionally trained in therapy and are licensed by the State or some other governing agency, more likely than not you are held accountable to uphold a code of ethics which assumes certain boundaries be maintained throughout the therapeutic relationship.

Then there are unregulated forms of therapy, such as peer counseling, life-coaching, religious counseling, and spiritual consultation, among others. For these therapeutic relationships, the lines of boundaries can blur, be crossed, or violated.

Some may say in religious therapeutic relationships that due to the separation of church and state, that no professional boundaries be maintained or enforced, and we see where that has gotten us. All you have to do is to look for the news stories of clerics in compromising positions for not maintaining boundaries to make you think twice.

The ACA code of ethics is an accepted guideline which sets forth a prescribed set of boundaries to protect both the therapist and the client. It helps to maintain a positive therapeutic environment for effective counsel and reduce the risk of compromise.

Of course, the first thought that comes to mind it that of sexual conduct. The agreed standard that intimacy or any sexual conduct in nature not be engaged in at any time during the therapeutic environment, nor for a period of five years following the completion of a therapeutic relationship.

There are other boundaries which help maintain a professional relationship between therapist and client, like not going to the movies, out to lunch, exchanging gifts, attending birthday parties, or other social events.

Yet, as in all things, these boundaries which should be enforced by all people helping other people, whether regulated or not, are amidst a spectrum, left to the interpretation of the therapist or the company they keep.

On one end of the spectrum your therapist might meet with you in an office with no amenities, there is no physical contact between counselor and client, not even a handshake. If you meet your counselor in the aisle in a supermarket, you will find him or her unapproachable. Even if you’re amidst a serious emotional outpouring, when your time is up, the session is over. If you can’t pay, the fee is non-negotiable, and there is no out of office or after-hours support.

On the other end of the spectrum, your counselor may offer you tea, may begin your session with a handshake and conclude with a cursory hug. If you meet this counselor in public, he or she may smile, stop, and engage in conversation with you for a while. You may run over your assigned time limit if reasonable or necessary, and there may be some flexibility in making payments and/or additional connection methods or support outside office hours.

There is no right or wrong way to do this as different modalities and schools of therapeutic thought interpret these boundaries differently. There is no judgment here, but the primary goal is to unequivocally protect and support the client.

Transference is a normal occurrence within the therapeutic relationship and it’s up to you to find the boundaries which work best for you, preserving this sacred, safe space.

If you are sitting in the seat of the coach, consultant, or counselor it is up to you to make clear your boundaries at the beginning of the therapeutic relationship and remind your client periodically when it appears, he or she might be approaching a boundary.

If you are the patient, it is on you to adhere to these boundaries and be certain to tell your counselor if you have boundaries of your own which need to be respected. If you feel like any boundary is unreasonable, talk it through with your counselor.

Talk to your counselor about your feelings and don’t keep them bottled up lest they explode. Negotiate your therapeutic relationship and make it work for both of you, or it may be time for a change.

Power vs. Force David Hawkins

You just never know when you’re going to connect to something that is important and ancient all in the same moment. This is what occurred to me while I was in training for a new modality and was introduced to Power vs. Force by David Hawkins as a supplementary text.

It was one of those not-so-rare discoveries that I made long after others in the know had been aware of it, not unlike Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life.

In Power vs. Force, I found Hawkins’ covering a lot of information I’d been exposed to previously, like kinesiology, and he presents us with the powerful gift of the “map of consciousness” which is a priceless tool which can be used in both personal and spiritual growth.

His map of consciousness lists the range of human conditions and emotions divided into two categories. As you may have guessed, they are Power and Force.

Click on the following image for Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness.

Anger, which calibrates at 150 in the Map of Consciousness is often the tipping point leading to either negative progression or positive, depending on the response of the person who is expressing anger. Courage, which resonates at 200 is the dividing line between Force (vibratory states below 200) and Power (200 and above) generally enables one to move further up the scale, if he or she can keep from falling to a lower level vibration for whatever reason.

Power is of the spirit, it includes all those states and feelings which are pure, authentic, true, nurturing, and filled with love and above.

We are led to believe contrarily, that Force is the most powerful approach to life, to dominate and control others, to compare ourselves with others, and at the deepest levels feeling depressed, dejected, suicidal, or losing all will to live.

Force represents all thought and effort of the flesh. All things which are possible via our abilities and capabilities, our brute strength. Power, on the other hand, represents the wherewithal and strength accessed from without, beyond the capabilities of mankind, unconditional love, all that is God, and the power of the universe.

Alternative healing and treatment modalities may use various forms of kinesiology to enhance their abilities to interact and intervene in the lives of themselves and others. I know many Chiropractors well-versed in the use of kinesiology as well as many other alternative practitioners and doctors. The practice is more commonly referred to as muscle-testing.

A common use of muscle testing is the outstretched arm of a patient. Items can be placed in the opposing hand of the patient and tested to whether or not the item being held in the opposing hand is good or beneficial for the patient, while the practitioner applies downward pressure to the outstretched arm. If the item being held is beneficial, the arm will remain rigid. If the item is not good for the patient, the arm will weaken and be able to be pushed down.

Likewise, this same method can be used for just about anything which can be answered “yes” or “no” in the universe. Theoretically, by drilling-down using a succession of yes or no answers, anyone who practices kinesiology could practically discover the truth of most anything.

If the idea does not inspire you, think about this excerpt from the forward of Hawkins’ book:

IMAGINE-what if you had access to a simple yes-or-no answer to any question you wished to ask? A demonstrably true answer…. Any question. Think about it. There’s the obvious: “Jane is seeing another guy.” (Y/N?) Johnny is telling the truth about school. (Y/N?) But it’s only a short step to: “This is a safe investment.” (Y/N?) or “This career is worthy of my pursuit.” (Y/N?)

Hawkins also possessed a keen awareness of the truth continuum with the knowledge that all truth was subjective, based on the perspective of the observer at a particular point in time and space.

The most startling bit of information is that all of this is a free gift to all of us. It is built into each of us and can be accessed by any human being, though practice is necessary for most of us to develop any level of accuracy. I have known some people to who were born with the natural ability to access the process of kinesiology intuitively, not knowing there was such a name for the process.

While sounding quite “Woo-woo” on the surface, kinesiology has survived the test of time and weathered scientific testing, and it is practiced by traditional medical practitioners and doctors, as well as allopathic.

You can see the enormous value and impact that kinesiology and Hawkins’ Map of Conscious can have in the world of healing, therapeutic science, self-improvement, and spiritual awakening.

Statistics Do Not Apply to Individuals

For those of us in service to others, statistics help us to serve a greater number of people in less time do to our understanding of statistics which represent generalities, symptoms, tendencies, and popular beliefs or opinions regarding just about anything but statistics do not apply to individuals.

Far be it from me, or anyone in service to assume that people would study up on the published reports to assure their symptoms or problems would be in accord with the statistical data. People are not robots or numbers because they are individuals, just as you and I are individuals.

Let’s say, for instance, that you are a psychologist, and someone asserts, “All psychologists are restricted by scientific method.” While this may be true for the majority of psychologists, which only need be defined by a group representing 51% of the entire group, it doesn’t mean if applies to you.

You might be one of the psychologists who does not approach people as part of the whole, but as individuals to whom the statistics may not be applicable, because every human being is unique.

No matter how honest, open, and intensely someone may try to express something to you in great detail, much of the internal data will never be expressed, because it’s impossible to know what’s really going on inside someone else’s head.

There is a complete life of information racked up inside the mind, body, and spirit of every person, some of it can be recalled easily, or by prompting, yet this only accounts for about five percent of a person’s life experience.

The other 95 percent of life experience is recorded by the unconscious mind, or physiologically by the musculoskeletal or nervous systems. Other information is either recorded or leaves wounds and scars amid the cells of the body and/or the DNA.

Not having access to all the information makes it impossible to reduce a human being to the limited conditions of scientific method, even though this is the basis of human psychology.

It is vastly helpful to have a good understanding of the general conditions or symptoms to make a general diagnosis. At the very least, this is a good place to start, but people are not statistics.

Generalization is a form of abuse

To assume that anyone, a patient, client, acquaintance, friend, or family member, can be generally defined by a categorical subset of symptoms, attributes, or belief systems, is abusive.

To assume anything about anyone without having walked a lifetime in that person’s shoes (and even then, it would only scratch the surface because you would be walking and observing from your perspective) is a disservice to that individual and it is a form of abuse.

It would be like saying, “All two-year-olds are brats.” While it may be generally accepted that generally, a two-year-old human will begin to assert his or her independence with a tendency to become defiant, to assume your two-year old child is a brat is not only assumptive, it is abusive. Every two-year old child is an individual.

How much more of an individual will you become over a lifetime of experience and the making of your own way along your own life’s journey?

No one is “normal.” There is no such thing as normal. You must be willing to let go of the fantasy that any two people could be considered to be alike. Even among identical twins, they are not exact replications of each other, even though they are identical. How could one assume that any other two people could also be alike?

Statistics do not apply to individuals

Statistics do not apply to you. Certainly, you can agree that a general set of data could apply to you, though not completely. There will always be some exceptions to the rule(s) as they are applied and compared to each individual.

You are not a statistic.

You are a magnificent one-of-a-kind work of art. You are not broken. There is nothing wrong with you. You are just a little piece of God on a journey. A journey unlike any other journey. Find your own way to get the most out of this life the best way that you can.

My friends and I will be here to help you along the way, if you need us, and we understand you are not a statistic.

All and Nothing Therapy

Having studied and taught a variety of therapeutic modalities and working in the field of therapeutic science for years it is not uncommon for counselors, coaches and consultants to maintain a tool box full of these methodologies. While we may have been trained in a particular method, you might find the resulting techniques practiced by each individual varies in their method of delivering the specific techniques, as each practitioner develops their own unique style, based on their own prowess of all the therapeutic tools.

Lately, in a round table session with many therapists, I was able to query over a dozen practitioners who all admitted they had created their own version of strict methods they studied. Only two of them insisted they felt compelled to follow the exact modality as trained, in order to be authorized to add them by name to their menu of services offered.

In this group setting, I referred to this idea as, “All and Nothing Therapy,” as a contrast to the phrase commonly used as, “All or nothing.” It seemed to be an adequate title, at least for the conversation at hand, to describe the idea that most of us had created our own methods based on our specific training which honored the specific therapeutic model but had evolved in individual practice to only be closely related to the original version. And in most cases, the consensus seemed to be, that the evolved version was a combination of other previously learned therapeutic modalities.

So, if you’re going to see me, or any of my contemporaries, be forewarned, you’re going to have a life-changing experience unlike you will get anywhere else. That said, what are some of the things that we deal with on a regular basis? Well, we all agree that we’re in the paradigm shifting business, which is the broad stroke definition of what we do, while we all specialize. My specialty has evolved through many different focus groups from love, marriage, relationships and spiritual growth to business, with my current client list looking mostly like enlightened businesspeople at the moment.

It’s not that they are enlightened about their businesses so much, as they are entrepreneurs on a spiritual journey of enlightenment, while they are pursuing their businesses as an outlet of their spiritual growth, and supporting their (metaphoric) travel expenses along their journey. And there is a growing trend as I am seeing more and more spiritually inclined entrepreneurs expressing their message, skills and gifts, as an outpouring through their businesses or ministries.

One of the common issues they need to overcome include eliminating empowering others to slow their roll, or to get them worked up and over-reactive to series of words spoken by people who appear to be determined to pull them to lower energetic vibrations.

Think about it, if someone can say words to you that cause you to be offended, hurt your feelings or make you want to either fight or flee, this is not a reflection of the state of the person speaking the words. This is a clear indication that you have been predictably programmed by society to respond to those words in a specific manner and you fall for it every time. The mere fact that you respond to those words negatively, qualifies you to be a predictably manageable member of our society.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

With a little help of my friends, you can listen to someone’s litany of disrespecting or vile words and not be affected negatively. While we all may approach this challenge differently, with a little intervention, and a bit of skill, you can be emotionally bullet proof.

So, if you’re finding yourself being sensitive to what other people think or say about you, get some help. Seek out a counselor, coach or consultant who can take you through a metamorphic process that will have you thinking differently about the things that other people say, because the truth is,

People who judge others, are only expressing their own inner struggle and pain

There is no reason to take it personally, when someone is acting out because they are amidst so much inner turmoil or pain. This might be the only way they know how to relieve some of the pressure of their life. You might even think about how you are blessed to be the method for them to relieve some of this pent up frustration of pressure. Someone else may have really been deeply hurt by this person’s outburst.

You can take charge of this area of your life and/or any other part(s) of your life by embarking on your journey of empowering self improvement by learning how to be successful with personal development, if you’re so inclined.

Seek out a counselor, coach or consultant to be your accountability partner you resonate with and start kicking ass and taking names. Get in touch with who you really are, in tune with your life’s purpose and sharing your unique message, skills and gifts, because a better life is waiting for you.

If your life has been going on… and it seems pretty much the same ol’ same ol’, maybe it’s time to embrace your uniqueness and live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

Hypnosis

People ask me why I don’t teach hypnosis or promote hypnotherapy very often these days?

The answer is that my life and practice has moved away from brain tricks, like hypnotherapy and NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) to more heart-centered therapeutic modalities. While the mind/brain focus of my ministry has served me and others so well in the past, as my practice continues to evolve, I am realizing the heart is more powerful than the brain.

This has brought the scope of my practice full circle. When I began my work with people, helping them achieve their highest and best, my focus was primarily of a spiritual nature. In my attempt to better assist people in creating demonstrable and dramatic change I branched out into the science of the mind to augment my skill set. Tony Robbins introduced me to NLP and following master-level training, I continued my studies in hypnosis.

These tools were important in creating lasting results in the lives of my clients.

Led by curiosity and thirst for knowledge I continued to expand the tools used in helping my clients, and I began a never-ending journey of accumulating alternate modalities and certifications in therapeutic sciences.

Then, one day, it occurred to me (okay, brace yourself for this one) that everything – all treatment modalities of all kinds – were the same. They all had substance and were effective, while at the same time, they had no substance and were not effective.

It was then, that I concluded that love – not knowledge – was the answer and that the only real power was not the power of the mind (as I had been persuaded to demonstrate effectively and believe) but the heart which is the seat of all life.

This was when I decided to stop struggling for knowledge, and began a personal journey of allowing my own expansion and evolution by being open, peaceful and loving, while allowing anyone else to make their own way in any way that suits them at the time.

A great deal of my practice revolves around business consulting and increasing professional potential in my clients. Imagine the shift in the way I conduct my business affairs now (it’s a hoot, in comparison to days gone by).

I am more effective, now, but my approach is much different, I completely meet my clients where they are and find a vibration where we both can resonate to effectively make the most of our time together.

I find myself attracting a wide variety of individuals all at different places in their life’s journey, all making their own ways using different methods and doing the best they can with what they have. Just like me, only completely dissimilar, and I love it.

What does the future hold? Who knows?

I can’t wait to see what’s coming next!

How about You?

My hope for you, is that you find something that you love to do so much, that you would experience great joy, happiness and fulfillment doing it all the time, and even more: to be paid to do it. (How much better does it get?)

I have the best job in the world (which is really like no job at all) because I would do the work that I do with others without remuneration. That’s right. If I had all the money in the world and never had to work another day in my life, I would still be committed to and loving my supportive family, while helping people achieve their highest and best. I could only hope to be enthusiastically enjoying doing this work with my outstanding family, friends and the community at large, as I draw my last breath.

To me, this is my life’s mission. It is who I am. While through the course of my life this mission has taken a variety of forms, it has always been the same and I suspect will always remain (though I remain open)…

And ever-growing and expanding…

Vive la Evolution

Oh, yeah, about hypnosis: It’s life as we know it. Everything is hypnosis.

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The Right Coach for You

I work with many coaches and therapists and actively engage in training and certification of coaches and consultants. In my work with many coaches and consultants, what I’ve found is that no two practitioners are the same.

This is the beauty of the landscape filled with those assisting others with a myriad of issues and circumstances in life and business. In a perfect world, you would be able to find the perfect match for a coach, counselor or consultant with the tools necessary to maximize the time spent with your specialist.

Successful practitioners are constantly honing their skills and expanding their areas of expertise in an effort to better serve their target clientele. I have close to 40 certifications under my belt and instruct 18 therapeutic science modalities.

When someone comes in to work with me, it is of primary importance that together we discern whether this is a good match before we pursue our work together. Depending on your needs and what we both bring to the table, I might refer you to another coach whom is better equipped or specializes in a particular area.

We all have different areas of expertise, and our practices tend to morph and change over time. For instance, areas of specialization that were predominant in my practice years ago are now better handled by others whose practices focus on those target areas.

You might be thinking, what about all those previous areas of specialization? (Especially, if you worked with me previously in an area that is no longer on the menu of services covered in my current practice.) Of course, I am grateful that you sought me out, am happy to see you again and proud of your progress and accomplishments, but I must be true to my current calling and focus and to you and yours. So in your best interest, I will refer you to another associate.

All this to say, if you’re seeking a professional to team up with in your local geographic area, chances are there is someone keenly suited for your needs, requirements and/or circumstance. Which implies that it’ll behoove you to seek out someone who is just right for you.

Just as you come into the office with a certain set of skills, you want to make sure that your needs are commensurate to the skills that your coach, counselor or consultant has command of or access to.

It might be a good idea to know what type of coach you are looking for, nonetheless, a good coach will be able to help you determine and locate an appropriate type of coach. Coaches can specialize in areas of life, life skills, spiritual, family, parenting, relationships, dating, health, wellness, fitness, personal performance, professional development, career, business, leadership and executive (secret weapon) coaching just to name a few (of over a hundred).

Coaches may also have practices that include alternative therapeutic modals, like NLP, EFT, hypnotherapy, etc…

In your initial intake consultation, you should be able to ascertain whether this is a good match for you. If not, there is a good chance that your practitioner can refer you to someone better suited for you.